{"id":8183,"date":"2025-11-01T20:09:36","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T12:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=8183"},"modified":"2025-11-01T20:09:36","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T12:09:36","slug":"former-sji-facilities-manager-who-obtained-over-67k-in-bribes-jailed-more-than-15-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=8183","title":{"rendered":"Former SJI facilities manager who obtained over $67k in bribes jailed more than 15 months"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">SINGAPORE \u2013 <!-- -->For more than four years, a facilities manager at St Joseph\u2019s Institution (SJI) received more than $67,000 in bribes from vendors engaged to carry out various projects at the school.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">He admitted doing so as he needed money to pay mounting personal debts and family expenses.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">On Oct 30, Ng Cher Him, 58, was sentenced to 15 months and four weeks in jail after pleading guilty to four charges under the Prevention of Corruption Act, including corruptly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.straitstimes.com\/singapore\/courts-crime\/school-facilities-manager-charged-for-allegedly-obtaining-more-than-67000-in-bribes?ref=inline-article\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" class=\"gap-x-04 items-center inline text-primary-60 select-auto\" aria-label=\"link\" target=\"_blank\" data-testid=\"custom-link\"><\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular inline\" data-testid=\"paragraph-test-id\">accepting gratification to further business interests.<\/p>\n<p><\/a> He was also handed a penalty of $7,500.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">Deputy Public Prosecutor Maximilian Chew said Ng\u2019s job meant he had a substantial degree of influence in the procurement process for facilities-related goods and services in SJI.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">His modus operandi for the offences involved his getting the vendors to mark up their quotations submitted to SJI for the jobs and projects, with these mark-ups subsequently paid to him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">As part of his scheme, Ng would tell the vendors SJI\u2019s budget for the project, share competitors\u2019 bids for the project, and ultimately recommend that the school award the project to the vendors he was in cahoots with. Ng also told vendors to pay him in cash to avoid any paper trail of the payments. <\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">DPP Chew said that in January 2018, Ng approached Renee Song Mui Kuan, a sales manager at an interior furnishing firm, and broached the idea of her paying him in exchange for his assistance in awarding more jobs to her firm.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">Song agreed as she was afraid that if she rejected him, he would stop awarding jobs to her firm, said the prosecutor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">On more than 20 occasions between January 2019 and September 2022, Ng corruptly accepted more than $52,000 from Song via the scheme he had come up with.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">Ng also carried out the scheme with Chin Lee Lan, who handled the sales, operations and accounting matters at a security system firm. In November 2019, Ng approached Chin and told her the school wanted to install a closed-circuit television system in the school library. He then told Chin to arrange for two more quotations with higher prices from other companies to submit to SJI so that the quotation from her firm would be the lowest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">In 2020, Ooi Kim Wei, a director of an air-conditioning contractor, offered to give Ng money in exchange for projects at SJI. He told Ng that his firm had bid for several projects at the school but had always been unsuccessful.    <\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">Ng agreed, and informed Ooi of a project involving the upgrade of kitchen hood exhaust systems of food stalls at SJI.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">Ng told Ooi to submit a quotation and mark it up by $5,000, which would then be given to Ng.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">Ng\u2019s offences came to light when the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau received information of his acts in September 2022. He voluntarily resigned from SJI on Nov 2, 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">The cases involving Song, Chin and Ooi are still before the courts.   <\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">The court heard on Oct 30 that Ng, who had spent the bribes he had received, voluntarily surrendered $59,600 to the state in September 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">Seeking a sentence of 15 months and three weeks\u2019 jail to 17 months and four weeks\u2019 jail, DPP Chew said Ng had abused his position of power entrusted to him by SJI.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">The prosecutor said: \u201cThe accused\u2019s preferred vendors were unfairly awarded or recommended for the jobs and projects at SJI. Accordingly, other vendors which might have been more suitable or able to give more competitive prices lost opportunities to secure these jobs and projects.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">In mitigation, Ng, who was unrepresented, said: \u201cI totally regret this and am embarrassed by my actions. I hope for a lenient sentence so I can quickly come out and contribute to society.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.straitstimes.com\/singapore\/courts-crime\/former-sji-facilities-manager-who-obtained-over-67k-in-bribes-jailed-more-than-15-months\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article At Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SINGAPORE \u2013 For more than four years, a facilities manager at St Joseph\u2019s Institution (SJI) received more than $67,000 in bribes from vendors engaged to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}